Photo by Peter Lindbergh
It’s hard to grok, if you weren’t there, the ’90s supermodel era, when battalions of supermodels – impossibly gorgeous, otherworldly, like alien freaks – stomped across the land – on every magazine cover, on billboards, in every commercial, music video, everywhere – like Robert Crumb’s towering monster-women burst out of their frames and set loose upon the populace. It’s hard to get across what it was like when these Amazons – whom everyone knew by name, whom everyone knew everything about – were everywhere. My favorite was Linda (no last name necessary, at least not in MY world: they all were referred to by their first names). Linda said, famously, “I don’t get out of bed for less than $10,000.”
To this day, I still perk up when one of these women in the original superstar group does something, says something, shows up somewhere. I follow all of them on Instagram. They post pictures of their ’90s photo shoots, and they all tag each other, and I want to faint from awe.
That photo makes me want to listen to George Michael’s Freedom ’90 again.
YES. It’s soooo Freedom ’90.
Sometimes I put the legendary early 90s runway shows on YouTube as I’m getting dressed. They’re empowering somehow. They make me feel like eating the world in a blaze of eyeliner and big hair. My favorite thing is that it wasn’t just about the Big 5, for all they were the most famous and the most renowned. It’s that there were SO MANY great models, with so much personality. And so distinct. Marpessa, Nadege, Veronica Webb, Carla Bruni, Yasmin Le Bon – who looked like a French waif but sneered like she was at a punk rock show (in the best possible way). My personal favorite Yasmeen Ghauri, who carried herself like a queen no matter what she was wearing and had an unbelievable walk. She quit the business quite suddenly but she was everywhere at the time. Goddesses.
// It’s that there were SO MANY great models, with so much personality. And so distinct. //
I know!! They were like the movie stars of old – Harlow and Davis and Crawford and Hepburn – each with their own unique fingerprint, style, mood – they were not interchangeable, or like actresses today who all have the same hair stylist. These women were UNIQUE. I loved that era for this.
Yasmin Le Bon!! Yes!